Jean Genet's Early Letters to Ibis Reveal His Path to Becoming a Writer

A collection of twenty letters written by Jean Genet to Andrée Pragane, known as Ibis, between 1933 and the late 1930s has been published, offering insight into his formative years. At 22, Genet had already experienced a penal colony, military service in Damascus and Morocco, and desertion. Ibis co-directed the pacifist, feminist, anarchist-leaning weekly magazine Jeunes with Jean Walla, with whom Genet fell in love. The letters trace Genet's travels across Europe—from Buttes-Chaumont to Nice, Malaga, Toul, and Marseille—as he sought to avoid settling down. The correspondence includes Genet's first text intended for publication: an article and poem on Michel Vieuchange, who died during an expedition to the city of Smara. The letters show Genet developing his writing style, grappling with themes of body, love, wandering, and escape, and moving between prose and poetry. The publication coincides with the centenary of Genet's birth, alongside reissues of his works including L'Ennemi déclaré, Splendid's, Elle, Querelle de Brest (with a DVD of Fassbinder's film), and critical studies by Sartre, Tahar ben Jelloun, Albert Dichy, Pascal Fouché, Agnès Vannouvong, and Gilles Sebhan.